'Goldeneye' Trapped in No-Man's Land

This is our bi-monthly or so update on the status of Bioware's seminal FPS Goldeneye. The downloadable version of the game, originally released on the Nintendo 64, is trapped in a perpetual no-man's land. It's all-but finished, they say, but the game isn't likely to hit Xbox Live Arcade (or the PSN or the Wii) anytime soon. The legalities are holding up the fun. Here's how Rare senior software engineer Nick Burton puts it:

"That was a tricky one. To be fair, I kind of wished that the differences got sorted out, but obviously there's the licensing issue for Bond, even if it's something that's already come out," said Burton. "It's incredibly hard to solve because there's so many license holders involved. You've got the guys that own the license to the gaming rights now, the guys that have the license to Bond as an IP, and there are umpteen licensees."

Like the gay cowboys in Brokeback Mountain, we can't quit this game, so we will dutifully continue waiting and hope the teams of lawyers and suits get their collective act together so we can finally start blasting fools in Goldeneye.